Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!: 2024 Year End Totals

• SWIM: 141,897 yards.
• BIKE: 2520.26 miles (15.7 mph ave, across all biking), 1485.95 of those miles as actual "training."
• MOUNTAIN BIKE: 33.88 of those 2500+ biking miles (all with my boys - 6.32 in Alex, 27.56 miles in Cuyuna).
• COMMUTING BY BIKE: 1,000.43 of those 2500+ miles (biking with boys as they bike/run, to class, to meetings, to swim, etc).
• BIKE TRAINER: 64 hours 23 minutes. (1,223.28 miles calculated at 19 mph.)
• RUN: 1,185.52 miles (7:12.5 / mile ave).
• STRENGTH / CORE: 582 hours 49 minutes.
• WEIGHT: 156.6 start, 158.0 finish, 160.2 high (March), 153.0 low (Oct), 156.81 monthly average.
• BODY FAT: (monthly average) 13.6% high (May and June), 12.5% low (Oct), 13.14% average.

SOME NOTES ON THOSE YEARLY NUMBERS:

• SWIM: 5th biggest year of the last 19 years of training. I was consistent all year, getting in 1 decently long swim most weeks. (My swim workouts have been slowly getting longer and longer.) That helped me beat out years I swam more “sporadically,” but left me behind my biggest years of 2018 and 2019. In 2024, I was just behind 2 other years, so I wasn’t far from my 3rd biggest year! This overall total “is what it is” - I get to the pool when I can and I’m happy with that for the time being. (I might end up losing pool access here in 2025, so it might be dropping this year!)

• BIKE: BIGGEST YEAR EVER!!! I had a yearly PR in 2023 of 1,710 miles, but I went 800+ miles farther in 2024! It was also my first year of biking all year long - I biked outside every month, and only missed 2 weeks all year (the first week of the year when there were no classes to bike to, and the 3rd week of the year when we were in Jamaica). I biked to EVERY class at the U of M this past fall, and most of my classes there in the spring of 2024. And all summer, I biked to the pool. I made it a point to bike more “errands” when I could, and also to save money when having the pay for parking at the pool and while teaching all year at the U.

I had 2 big bike months in 2023 of 275 and 323 miles, but I had 2 BIGGER months in 2024 with back-to-back months of 370 and 400 miles in July and Aug (with two of my biggest weeks ever in July as well). The 5 months of May through Sept had 4 of those being 300+ miles, which was insane for me!

• BIKE TRAINER: 4th biggest year ever, but there’s nothing exciting about that. The previous 3 years (2021-2023) were my top 3 years, and that was partly due to not biking outside as much. So 2024 felt like it was less (and it WAS a little less), but I logged so many outdoor miles that the trainer was sort of an after-thought. Like swimming, it was what it was and I was 100% OK with that.

Another thing that’s big here is that calculating my trainer time at 19 mph, I have 1,223.28 miles added to my bike total. So 1,223.28 “miles” indoors plus 2520.26 miles outdoors equals 3,743.54 total bike miles. That’s a PR of “total bike miles” as well, beating the big trainer year of 2022 that had 3,500+ total miles. I’m much more productive outside, so those 200+ more total miles in 2024 were really a lot better than what it seems because a much larger percentage of those miles were outside in 2024. (2022 had less than 500 miles biked outdoors! And then almost 4x as much time on the trainer!)

• RUN: BIGGEST YEAR EVER!! FOR THE 4th STRAIGHT YEAR!! Sure, I worked through a little post-race injury in November, but 2024 was otherwise another stellar year of running! I set my 5K and 10 Mile PR back in 2010 (as a 28 and 29-year-old), which went down as a great year of running back then. But then I had a nearly as good TC 10 Mile in 2024 (only my 2nd time being sub-60), and I set a new 5K PR as well as a 43-year-old! On top of that, I set a 5-mile / 8K PR in 2024 as well, taking off over 30 seconds from another PR from over a decade earlier. And then also set a 10K PR by about 10 seconds. 2024 was a year of running that I’ll never forget! I’ll never have a year like that again!

(I also had a PR interval workout last spring, possibly my best interval workout at the track EVER late last winter, and the hardest run my Garmin has said I've done where I lost POUNDS of fluid.)

2024 weekly long runs: all 10+ miles except when resting pre/post-race
or when backing off due to heel pain in November.

2024 weekly run distance: generally around 22-24 miles.

• STRENGTH / CORE: BIGGEST YEAR EVER!! I had a PR in 2020, and I’ve been setting PRs every year since then! (2024 was 75 hours more than 2023, which was 34 hours more than 2022, which was 35 hours more than 2021, which was 22 hours more than 2020, which was 112 hours more than 2019 - “quarantine” related jump there for sure!) I do lots of more “lazy” physical therapy leg exercises when helping the boys with homework or watching TV. This is been a great stretch of yearly PRs that I DO NOT PLAN to keep up! Just riding out the good upper body and lower body routines as long as I can!

• WEIGHT: barely down over the last few years, and loving that! I spent 2021-2023 with a yearly average of 157.x lbs, and it dropped to 156.8 for 2024 (so BARELY a drop). And 2016-2020 averaged over 160 lbs. I have a bigger upper body than I did in the late 2010s, but I did really NO “weight room” leg exercises in 2024, so some of this slight drop could be due to slightly smaller quads/hammies. But loving the weight I’m at (although I’d always love to shed about 3-5 lbs... like everyone).

Monthly averages for 2024. A drop in weight during my good TC 10 Mile training late summer...

... also a drop in body fat during that stretch.

Here are my monthly totals according to my training log:

2024 distance: consistent swims, and big summer bike months!

2024 training time.

2024 distance with “trainer time” added in at 19 mph.

June was small because I was “up north” for a family wedding for 4-5 days earlier in the month, and then camping with my boys and niece and nephew for 4 days (on a “fun uncle” trip) later in the month.

I noted in my 2023 year in review that I had 3 months over 500 total miles for the first time ever (with 1 month in the past [in 2022] coming close to 500 miles at 494 miles, which is miles of running + miles of biking + swimming yards divided by 100). As seen in the graph above, I had SEVEN months in 2024 above 500 total miles! (Mar, Apr, May, July, Aug, Sept, and Dec!) And Jan and Feb were both around 490 miles, so they were close as well!

And here are some other random graphs from my Garmin:

My V02 Max started 2024 slowly climbing, then spiked around the intense TC 10 Mile training.

First we've seen "walking" - been doing a lot of that for the last few years.

Again, lots of random walks.

My resting HR is in the lower 40s normally.

A big spike in heat acclimation due to some hot runs in Jamaica in Jan.

Two dips in June from the “up north” wedding and camping later in the month,
and 2 dips in Oct pre-TC 10 Mile and post-TC 10 Mile when we were in Yellowstone.

125k+ steps every week except 3: once in July when
my Garmin died, and twice in November when resting a sore calf.

My Garmin had 6,951,099 steps for 2024 (making that 6,986,099 by adding 35,000 steps for the 2+ days my Garmin had died). That's an average of 19,140 steps / day throughout 2024. And kind of related to that, I noticed around Thanksgiving of 2023 that Garmin had "badges" for walking 1 mile / day for 30 days straight, as well as 30+ mins of exercise / day for 30 days straight. At that point (about 15 months ago), I started doing both of those, so 2024 had at least a 1 mile walk / day as well as at least a 30 min workout / day. And I've now had 10,000+ steps every day since April 3rd of 2023 (I had some foot pain the weekend before that so I stayed off my feet, but I've hit 10K steps every day for the last 22 months straight).

Showing I was in my best running shape for the TC 10 Mile,
then a drop in race times after resting an injury in Nov.

Again, peaking in Oct.

Random yearly numbers.

TOP ATHLETIC HIGHLIGHTS OF 2024: (counting down from #8 to #1)

• EIGHT: swimming a hard 30:00 leg of an indoor triathlon relay. It had been years since I tried any sort of "30 min time trial" in the pool (commonly called a "postal swim"), and I didn't know what I'd be able to do. I figured I'd at least get 1700 yards. I HOPED to hit 1800 yards. But then I started at a pace faster than I thought I'd be able to hold... and I ended up holding it. I hit 1900 yards in 30 mins with 500 splits that were SUPER consistent.

Swimming with a co-worker (me on the right) as seen in my race report.

• SEVEN: missing my goal at the Raspberry Run 1 Mile. After hitting 3 PRs already in 2024, I had my sights set on a 1 mile PR. I had put in the work over the last 15 months - my track workouts had been consistent, fast, and short. I had a shot at a 1 mile PR that I was working for over the prior 12 months. But between a few of my final key track sessions happening in the pouring rain, my final “track” session happening away from home on a paved trail, and a race day that was a little humid and slightly slick after a rain storm, it just wasn’t in the cards. I put myself on track to PR which I was really happy about, but I died in the final 1/4 mile and couldn’t hang on. Yes, this sounds like a “lowlight,” but I still feel like this was a highlight of 2024 - I did what a could, was bummed it didn’t happen, but walked away with it knowing I had truly given it shot.

A pre-race shot from my Raspberry Run race report.

• SIX: ending my running streak with a little calf issue. I had some calf pain off-and-on through October and November in 2024 that lead to me skipping 2 runs. (It seems all better now, but I'm always watching it.) That ended a REALLY NICE stretch of injury-free running that went back to the end of May in 2021! That was 3.5 years of running strong, which really paid off for me with some fast races in 2024!

• FIVE: a year of outdoor bike rides every month (and weekly outdoor rides 50 out of 52 weeks). Commuting so much by bike was my biggest highlight in 2023, but now it already feels like old hat. It doesn’t take long long to start a new good habit! Being it’s February of 2025 as I write this, I’ve had 24 months STRAIGHT of outdoor rides, starting back in March of 2023. This added 1,000 miles to my biking total for 2024 - I don’t know if any of that can count as true “training,” but I’m happy to get more activity, not be so reliant on my car, show my kids another way to stay fit, and save money on parking at the pool and while teaching at the U.

• FOUR: hitting a race PR at the Square Lake Sprint Triathlon. I need to race more multisport races. They are FUN. And at my only triathlon of 2024 (that I'd done the last few years in a row), I turned in a PR in all 5 disciplines: swim, T1, bike, T2, and run. It was a fast race for me, and I just barely finished 2nd overall!

Finishing the swim, bike, and run at the Square Lake Triathlon.

• THREE: pushing my training HARD with some old workouts from Coach Jen leading up to the TC 10 Mile. I chronicled this pretty in-depth throughout Aug and Sept. (You can find details from the first half of my training here, and the last half of my training here.) I was happy with how I was able to push myself and to see what splits I could hit throughout that training. I was waiting to have to back off because of an injury, but I kept it rolling. I was pretty “dialed in” for those few months, but I think I’ve had my fun - I don’t think I’ll be hitting it as hard this year. I was a bit consumed with this race, and it’s not healthy (mentally) for me to do that super often.

That point leads me to my next highlight...

• TWO: my 2nd ever sub-60 at the TC 10 Mile. As “individual” highlights go, this would honestly be the top one. I was THRILLED to hit 59:23 at the TC 10 Mile in 2024! I was at mile 8 of the 10 mile (a place where I’m usually hurting and not sure what the final splits would hold) and I KNEW I had a sub-60 wrapped up. That’s INSANE. I was running such even splits and feeling on top of the world. It was a magical race, even if the race photos in the final mile shows that my face was saying otherwise:

I WAS having a good time. Truly.

• ONE: all the running PRs. Like I said in the “running” section above, 2024 was an amazing year. I cannot / do not expect to have another year where I can set 3 lifetime PRs while coming close to a 4th (in the 10 mile).

The 5-mile PR, post-10K PR with my family, and finshing a surprising 5K PR all within 2 months!

As for 2025, I don't have any big goals. I want to work to stay injury-free, still get in as much strength time as possible (but I'll be OK with that number dropping a bit), and work to keep my running strong. I need to work on my snacking habits too... they're getting worse. I do NOT expect 2025 to be as great as 2024, but I'll see what the year brings... maybe more multisport races? I dunno. I also hope to keep the walking streak going, as I've really enjoyed MOVING more. Same with biking more errands - I only have 1 week in 2025 so far that I haven't been out on my bike, so I might try to keep that going too.

And finally, as I like to do at the end of every year, here are a few pics from my Instagram account to take us through 2024 one last time: